Sony and Warner Sue AI Company Over 'Massive' Copyright Theft
If AI can steal songs, your creative work could be next.
Sony Music and Warner Chappell have filed a lawsuit against Anthropic, the company that makes the AI chatbot Claude. The music publishers claim Anthropic stole "tens of thousands" of copyrighted songs to train its AI. They call it "one of the largest and most blatant ongoing thefts of intellectual property in history." The labels are seeking up to $150,000 for each song, plus extra penalties when copyright information was removed. If they win the maximum amount, the total could reach several billion dollars.
The lawsuit says Anthropic downloaded over 5 million pirated books using BitTorrent, and that employees grabbed at least 2 million more from a site called Pirate Library Mirror. It also says Anthropic scraped lyrics from sites like MusixMatch and LyricFind — sites that had paid to license those lyrics from the labels. Famous songs named in the filing include Marvin Gaye's "Ain't No Mountain High Enough," Bon Jovi's "Livin' On a Prayer," Earth, Wind & Fire's "September," and Taylor Swift's "Paper Rings."
This is not Anthropic's first legal fight. The company recently settled a similar lawsuit with the publishing industry for $1.5 billion. It also faces separate lawsuits from Universal Music Group, Concord, ABKCO, BMG, and Round Hill Music. This new case goes further by naming Anthropic's co-founders, Dario Amodei and Benjamin Mann, as individual defendants. The complaint alleges Mann personally used BitTorrent to download copyrighted books.
For everyday people, this fight is about who gets paid when AI learns from human creativity. If the music publishers win, AI companies may be forced to license the music, books, and art they use — which could raise the cost of building AI. It could also mean AI chatbots like Claude become less able to quote song lyrics or reference famous works without permission. The outcome of this case could set a precedent for how all creative content is handled in the age of AI.
- Sony and Warner are demanding up to $150,000 per song for tens of thousands of copyrighted works.
- The lawsuit claims Anthropic downloaded 5 million pirated books and scraped lyrics from sites that had legal licenses.
- Anthropic already paid $1.5 billion to settle a similar lawsuit from book publishers, and this is just one of many ongoing AI copyright cases.
Why It Matters
AI companies may have to start paying creators, which could change the cost and capability of future AI tools.